by Ron Jacobs

While I was at the University of Maryland during the 1974-1975 academic year one of the projects among the leftist counterculture community was supporting a group of students who wanted to start a food co-op on campus.

These folks were constantly being threatened by an administration that had sold its soul to big business years before. In this particular instance, the co-op workers had been arrested twice for selling food in front of the student union without a permit.

Of course the reason they were selling without a permit was because the school wouldn’t give them one because it violated the standard exclusive contract that the Marriot Corporation had with the University. So, the University sent its cops out to cuff a bunch of hippies selling sandwiches. Such obvious corporate buttkissing eventually worked against the school and, after a spring of demonstrations and arrests, the trustees changed the food service contract, and allowed the co-op to operate legally, even giving it a room in the Student Union building and some money to bring their operation up to code.

Later on that year while the co-op struggle languished in officialdom, our cadre of the Revolutionary Student Brigade (RSB) set up a human blockade around a pair of Marines who were attempting to recruit a few good men from the campus. This was the first time since before the Cambodia/Kent State riots in 1970 that any type of military recruitment had been attempted on the University of Maryland campus. Our goal was to make them leave. Every day at noon a bunch of antiwar types would sit down in front of the Marines’ table in front of the Student Union building and link arms. Eventually there would be between fifty and a hundred folks completely surrounding the table. The Marines just stood there at attention, but occasionally right wing students, usually big white guys, would charge through the crowd. It wasn’t that they wanted to join the Marines --they just wanted to kick some commie butt. From what I remember, the only butt they kicked belonged to a woman with real long hair who attended RSB meetings. One afternoon, she threw her ninety-pound body in front of some guy who thought he was running through the defensive front line of the Washington Redskins football team and he trampled her. She ended up with some badly bruised ribs and a charge of assault. He ended up feeling like a man.

After this incident the University had the Marines move inside the Student Union building to a room that was towards the back of the building. They left the campus when nobody cared enough to find them. Before that occurred, however, two of our cadre members from off-campus were arrested on trespassing charges for sitting inside the room where the Marines were. The rest of our cadre and some supporters took over one of the dean’s offices and held it until they were released.

One of our other projects was helping to bring down the Shah of Iran- a brutal dictator who was owned lock, stock and barrel by the CIA and the oil companies. His secret police ñ the SAVAK ñ were notorious for the regime of fear they had created in Iran and amongst Iranians around the globe. Lots of Iranian youth studied in the United States, and the DC area certainly had its share. I was one of the liaisons to the Iranian Students Organization (ISA). We spent several afternoons together at a crowded office in downtown DC taking part in meetings planning for the upcoming visit to DC by the shah. In return for our support, local ISA members attending the University of Maryland helped us out as much as possible. Once when we were picketing the Administration building over a planned budget cut aimed at the Ethnic Studies department, two Iranian guys driving a black Mercedes pulled up on the sidewalk, jumped out of the car and attacked our Iranian friend whom I’ll call Rashif. They almost had him in the car before we realized that they were probably part of the Shah’s secret police (SAVAK) and trying to kidnap him.

After a bit of a struggle, we managed to rescue him. Rashif was a very dedicated Marxist revolutionary and took it all in stride. It was his instruction that helped me to understand some of the finer nuances of Lenin’s treatise on imperialism. After the attack, he disappeared for a couple weeks and then reappeared. After the Iranian revolution I heard that he had returned to Iran. For all I know, Khomeini’s soldiers killed him.